Hoppenhelm interview with Tobias Ornberg

Interview with Tobias Ornberg, the developer of Hoppenhelm

As usual, we were not hired or paid to feature this game. If it’s bad, we’ll tell you it’s bad.

Do you remember our review of Hoppenhelm – A hyper-addictive dungeon adventure game for iOS and Android? If so, today we would like to share our interview with Tobias Ornberg, the developer of this fun little game we struggled to put down long enough to write our review…😝

If you have yet to check out our review of Hoppenhelm, you can do so here!

Before we start we’d like to thank the Tobias Ornberg for participating in our interview and for answering all of our geeky questions! Thanks Tobias!

…and without further ado, our interview begins…

The Interview

Thanks for taking the time to talk to us about Hoppenhelm, could you kick-start this interview by telling us a little about your studio and what drew you to Game Development?

Hi! Yes well, my name is Tobias Örnberg and I’m a solo developer. I do pretty much everything in my games except the music. I’ve always liked playing games and I used to fantasize about making my own. A couple of years ago I found out about Gamemaker and that blew my mind, I didn’t know it was possible to make games without the skills or knowledge of how to write code. Imagine holding a device and playing your own game! I just couldn’t resist.

First question. What was the core idea (or inspiration) that sparked the development of Hoppenhelm?

I don’t really like it when there’s a lot of buttons to keep track of in mobile games, so I knew I wanted restrictions on the number of inputs the player could make.

At the time I was playing some other mobile games which had the “tap one time to jump” mechanic and I started to wonder what it would be like if the player could do one or two additional things aside from moving.

What were the hardest problems you faced during the different development stages of Hoppenhelm?

The hardest part for me was – and still is – writing the code. I’m an illustrator originally and just recently started out learning to code. Luckily the Gamemaker community is very friendly and helpful.

Another hurdle is the lack of time I can spend on game development. With a full-time job and two small kids at home (one was born during the development of Hoppenhelm), there’s just not that much time I can spend on making games. Which is a good thing perhaps, otherwise I wouldn’t do anything else.😝

For our nerdy Developer Fans, what programming language and or software did you use when developing Hoppenhelm? And was it a good decision?

I use Gamemaker Studio 2. I first started out with the drag-n-drop functions but later moved on to code in the native language GML. I really like Gamemaker, it’s easy to get into and has a lot of features. For art I use photoshop and sometimes illustrator, depending on the look of the graphics. I do all the animations in the sprite editor in Gamemaker.

What advice would you give to a new player trying Hoppenhelm for the first time?

Remember to use the shield.😃

Edamame Reviews: Short and sweet.Best advice in the world.😂

Where do you get your inspiration or ideas from?

Movies, books, music, games and everyday life. Anywhere really, last summer I was in a toy store with my kids and saw a bouncy castle, on the box it said something in German, Hüpfburg, I thought that sounded cool.😃

A few words to Hoppenhelm fans on Edamame Reviews. Any new games in the near future? What can we look forward to next?

First of all thanks for playing my game!

I’m working on a prototype at the moment which uses the same mechanic as Hoppenhelm but takes it further and twists it a little bit. I can’t say much more yet but there might be big guns and mutated monsters.

Edamame Reviews: Sounds awesome! We can’t wait to check it out!😆

Lastly a few words on how you feel about Edamame Reviews and our service.

I really like these small developer interviews, it’s nice to read about other developers struggles and accomplishments.

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